2013年02月26日
Liora Lassalle's upcycling alchemy 【Telegraph.co.uk】
When Liora Lassalle won Re-Source , a competition run by the British Fashion Council's eco platform, Estethica, last year, she was handed a pile of discarded bin men's uniforms and told to create a catwalk collection. Lassalle, 24, a Central Saint Martins graduate, was thrilled. "It was really exciting when I got the delivery. I was given hi-vis reflective and padded jackets, navy sweatshirts and T-shirts, and plastic stretchy jackets. I love using bright colours, so the fact that I could recycle luminous fabrics was brilliant." Her 10-piece capsule collection for autumn/winter 2013 was unveiled at the Estethica stand during London Fashion Week earlier this month, and an accompanying video showed the clothes in motion. Limited numbers of the collection will go on sale this month at yoox.com, from £153.
The competition, run in conjunction with Central Saint Martins and Veolia Environmental Services (a recycling and waste management company), stipulated that students create clothes from sustainable sources for their graduate collections. Twelve students entered. Lassalle impressed the panel with her energetic designs, convincing them that she deserved the prize of Estethica mentoring and the opportunity to produce an upcycled collection. "I wanted to use natural fabrics, so I worked with hemp and jute," she says of her final collection for Central Saint Martins. "I used a thick hemp canvas from Cornwall, a beautiful fabric that felt down-to-earth, and hand-printed it with fluorescent paints."
Liora's designs for her autumn/winter 2012 using offcuts of luxurious fabrics alongside upcycled bin men's uniforms. Photos: Liora Lassalle.
Recycling is second-nature to Lassalle. "We have a lot of antiques dealers in my family. My dad is a hoarder - doorways in his house double as hanging spaces for rows of shirts, his corridors are rammed - and I like to use things that are lying around." For her graduate collection Lassalle embroidered natural raw hessian jackets with plastic bags. "I had so many plastic bags in my house, so I cut them into strips and used them like raffia, as a thread." Empty beer cans abandoned by housemates in her east London flat were cut up, embossed, and sewn on to dresses.
Her Re-Source '18th-century-inspired' capsule collection, produced under the guidance of the ethical fashion designer and Estethica curator Orsola de Castro, employs similarly ingenious methods. Each item upcycles Veolia-donated materials and combines them with offcuts from de Castro's fabric collection, amassed over the course of her career from design houses all over Europe. A quilted navy jacket, originally a lining, has been combined with Lycra panels and restitched in neon-yellow thread, with vintage French lace appliquéd over stains on the shoulders. A pair of trousers fashioned from reflective strips sits alongside a jersey T-shirt embellished with neon ruffles and pearls.
"I thought the contrast of the bin-man fabrics with the pearls was interesting. It was a challenge because although the items had been cleaned they were covered in stains, so I had to find the best bits," Lassalle says.
Her biggest test has been adapting from creating one-off pieces to a line of 50 near-identical pairs of jeans as a separate exercise for yoox.com. An Italian manufacturing company donated 104 pairs of faulty jeans, which Lassalle shredded and sewed back together in horizontal strips. De Castro says her idea is "genius. It can be done with any material, and it's a creative way to use unsold garments." Filippo Ricci, the co-founder of Estethica, agrees. "Liora integrates materials from different origins to make everything fit in a single piece. That is not an easy achievement."
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9887935/Liora-Lassalles-upcycling-alchemy.html
投稿者 unicon : 2013年02月26日 11:06